NEW YORK—Certainly it sounded like gamesmanship earlier this week when Glen Sather, the general manager of the New York Rangers, heralded a team that trails his in the standings as the NHL’s gold standard.

“(The Pittsburgh Penguins are) obviously, I think, the best team in the league,” Sather told TSN.

It didn’t take long on Thursday night, when the Penguins visited the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, for Sather’s contention to look less like a pre-playoff psyche-job and more like a plainly stated fact.

Not only did the Penguins celebrate Sidney Crosby’s first NHL game in 100 days with a 5-2 dismantling of the Rangers; not only did Crosby register an assist and a plus-3 rating in 16 sharp minutes that suggested he could very well be, fingers crossed on the hard-to-figure vagaries of head and neck injuries, his usual game-changing self in the stretch drive and beyond.

The Penguins also reaffirmed their status as a highly-skilled, hard-playing juggernaut that’s won the Cup before and happens to be peaking in the regular season’s final month. Pittsburgh has reeled off 10 straight victories now; they won nine of those without the world’s best player and five of them without their No. 1 defenceman, Kris Letang, who also returned from concussion on Thursday night with an assist and a marvellous plus-5 night.

Oh, and Thursday’s Gotham drubbing also pulled Pittsburgh within four points of New York for the Atlantic Division lead behind a typically stellar night from world-class goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who made an assortment of showstoppers among his 29 saves.

The same has been said many times of the 24-year-old Crosby, and in his role as Thursday night’s feature attraction on Broadway, No. 87 performed admirably and promisingly. This was nothing like Crosby’s Nov. 21 comeback after nearly a year away from the NHL lights. On that occasion, he took advantage of a sitting-duck New York Islanders team to ring up a highlight-reel goal on his third shift and four points all told.

Crosby spent the hours before Thursday’s game shrugging off its significance, trying to frame it as just another day at the office—albeit a day at the office that, in the estimation of Rangers forward Brandon Dubinsky, attracted “10 times more media” than a typical shinny match at the World’s Most Famous Arena.

“I’ve already been through this once,” Crosby insisted.

He acknowledged, mind you, that he’d learned a few things from his first comeback from the concussion and neck ailment that have plagued him since his fateful collision with David Steckel at the 2011 Winter Classic. Crosby said that, when last he returned to the NHL, he’d sought out contact “a little bit too much” as if to prove to himself he could withstand the punishment; eight games and an elbow from Boston’s David Krecji later, Crosby found himself on the shelf for more than three months.

He didn’t put himself in position for superfluous rough stuff on Thursday night, which suggested, albeit anecdotally, that Sid the Kid has found some veteran wisdom.

Said Crosby: “I was just trying to calm myself a little bit more. Last time (in November) I was pretty excited, and I was excited this time. But I didn’t want to get caught trying to do too much. I was just trying to make sure I stayed as even-keeled as I could, and it wasn’t easy.”

Not that the Rangers wouldn’t have been happy to drill him. Said Mike Rupp, the Rangers centreman who spent the previous two seasons with the Penguins: “You get a chance to hit (Crosby) pretty good, you’ve got to hit him.”

And certainly Crosby will be braced for the occasional pounding as the season grinds on. But the Pittsburgh captain clearly didn’t give the appearance of some vulnerable newbie working himself into shape.

On a night on which he showed plenty of speed through the neutral zone, he also showed some versatility. Along with playing the point on the (0-for-4) Pittsburgh power play and centring a couple of different sets of wingers (Matt Cooke and Tyler Kennedy to begin; Steve Sullivan and Pascal Dupuis later on), Crosby also played wing alongside centre Jordan Staal, a position he said he hadn’t manned since his rookie year.

Crosby’s assist on the Chris Kunitz goal that made it 4-2 saw him fend off pressure down low while making a tape-to-tape feed to the faceoff circle. If he looked in midseason form, Bylsma, who called Crosby’s work on Thursday “a pretty good start,” acknowledged that Crosby has been the fastest skater in Penguins practices for some time now.

The tests only pile up from here. The Penguins play in New Jersey on Saturday, Philadelphia on Sunday. And while Bylsma told reporters that he had theorized ways to keep Crosby fresh in the buildup to the post-season, he also laughed when he recounted a conversation with his captain about the possibility of Crosby sitting out one leg of the impending back-to-back.

“It’s a joke (because) he wouldn’t sit out (if he had the choice),” Bylsma said.

Said Crosby: “I’ve worked hard the last few months to get back. ... These are exciting games you want to play in.”

The Penguins, indeed, are an exciting squad that no team in the East will want to play in the first round, not to mention the second and third. Together again, hoping their reunion will be anything but temporary, the NHL’s best team sounded almost afraid to jinx their recent good health in a season that’s brought them enough of the other kind.

“It was really awesome to have all the guys back again,” Crosby said. “It’s a lot of fun. I don’t think anybody wants to talk about it too much.”

With about 90 days and untold twists before the Stanley Cup is awarded, certainly nobody’s talking like the champion is preordained. But on Thursday night, as the NHL’s best team of the moment appeared to get a whole lot better, it wasn’t difficult to imagine looking back on Sather’s March flattery as nothing more than sage prophesy.

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